Living it up with Instagram offspring
MEET the local pint-sized Instagram stars who pose for posts that deliver them and their families lifestyles of the rich and famous.
U on Sunday
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As she steps into position and the camera lights start to flash, Piper Seymour knows exactly what to do. When to laugh. How to smile. Where to put her feet. What to do with her hands. When to change poses. What to do when her hair is out of place.
Dressed in a tiny denim jacket, a pink and white summer dress, and sunnies, this four-year-old mini-model laughs on cue and poses as she’s told.
Between shots there are glimpses of an ordinary kid who loves Minnie Mouse and playing with her tiny figurines from the movie The Secret Life of Pets, or pretending to be a dinosaur from the latest Jurassic World film.
But her life is far from normal. For the little girl from Woody Point in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, this is her job, and she’s wildly successful.
The tiny fashionista has got here by amassing more than 52,000 followers on Instagram, under @pipersienna, an account started when she was six months old by her mother, Kerry Seymour. The majority of posts are sponsored by brands, and they come with rewards including free holidays, clothes or money. Seymour says she earns up to $550 per post.
Piper is not alone. There is a tribe of kids around the world being made “instafamous” through social media accounts run by their parents (Instagram requires children to be 13 before they can open their own account). Before they even start school, they’re slowly building their own empires. In Australia, among the most high-profile “instakids”, are Sunshine Coast-based four-year-old Millie-Belle Diamond, with 189,000 followers, and Pixie Curtis, 6, daughter of Sydney PR queen Roxy Jacenko, who has 103,000 followers.
Millie-Belle, or MBD, was once the most famous baby in the world on Instagram, with a wardrobe full of Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, and Burberry, and last year, she walked on the runway at New York Fashion Week. Pixie’s wardrobe is equally extravagant, and even features her own fashion line of hair accessories.
Brands buy these influencers with money, free products or hotel rooms and flights to enviable destinations.
The kids are snapped in exotic locations around the world, spruiking products and wearing high-end fashion labels. For their parents, this isn’t about posting family snaps online, it’s a business.
These highly curated, choreographed pictures can earn influencers anywhere between $50 and $2000 a post, in a rapidly booming industry.
Seymour says they’re guaranteed to make at least “a few hundred” dollars a week and could be earning more, except she knocks back a steady stream of offers if they don’t fit Piper’s “brand”.
“It is a full-time business for me,” says the 40-year-old mother-of-three. Piper has an older brother, Josh, 11, and an adult sister, Bella, 20.
“I hate to say the word brand because then you have your psychologists weighing in saying she’s not a brand, but it’s the best way to explain it.
Piper Sienna is the brand. She is what people want to see.”
The tiny model is pictured posing poolside in Bali, in the deserts of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and promoting food delivery app Uber Eats. Piper’s success affords the whole family opportunities to travel the world, and when we meet, they’ve just returned from Hong Kong.
As Seymour home-schools her children, they are flexible to travel any time of the year.
From the outside, the life of an influencers appears charmed. But kids like Piper are thrown into the spotlight by their parents, which has experts divided on whether the experience is damaging or just a normal part of growing up in the age of social media.
Dr Peta Stapleton, an associate professor of psychology at Bond University, says that if parents aren’t careful, they risk denying their kids a
“normal childhood”.
“The barometer is to look at the friends who aren’t doing any of this and see what they’re doing, and ask ‘is my kid having a normal life as well?’” says Dr Stapleton, who has 22 years’ experience as a clinical and health psychologist.
“Becoming an Instagram star, or even having photo shoots and endorsement meetings, is not what we would call normal development, and it could actually lead to what we call real personality issues of entitlement,” she says. “If that becomes a child’s normal world, it’s not like going to daycare or playing with their friends.
“We see later on in life the development of personality traits like narcissism, where you believe you are better than everybody else.”
Yet child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg disagrees, and says as long as the child is having fun, there are plenty of positive outcomes.
“I think it is fairly harmless – this is 2018,” he says of the reality of most children who now grow up accustomed to having every moment of their lives documented on social media.
“If you’re selling children’s clothes, it’s legitimate to use children in the photos, and as long as it’s fun and they’re not upset by it, I don’t see the problem,” he says. “They’re learning at a young age to associate effort with outcome, and there is a value to looking nice. They’re basically presenting themselves in the right light.”
Carr-Gregg says often children aren’t given enough credit for the choices they’re able to make, even a a very young age.
“Four-year-olds do know what they’re doing, and some are really professional,” he says. “They turn up on set and do what they’re told, put on the make-up and stand the way they’re told, and a lot of them have fun.”
A day after the U on Sunday cover shoot, Seymour messages to say Piper loved every moment and asked if she could come back the next day. The mother-of-three is well aware of the criticism but says for her daughter, the benefits far outweigh the negatives.
“I think if I saw it was harming her or having an effect on her, then yes, I’d have to do something about it, but I see the benefits she gets out of it,” she says. “I meet other four-year-olds and they don’t have the confidence or worldly knowledge she has.”
There’s no doubting Piper, who has collaborated with brands such as Country Road and Zara, is advanced for her age. She confidently chats to a room full of adults and independently ties a tricky buckle on her shoe. She is polite and sweet; there are no tantrums, no backchat and
no arguments.
It’s a self-assuredness that has developed from her experiences, says her mum.
“When people talk to her they’re blown away, and a lot of that comes from what she’s seen, the places she’s been … I can only see that as a good thing,” Seymour says.
Even so, Dr Stapleton says while Instakids may enjoy some of the experiences, she questions whether parents are using their children as a “money-making venture”.
“I don’t know if they (parents) consciously think they’re exploiting their child, but because they’re so young and they’re making that choice (for them) … there has to be something they’re getting out of it,” she says.
“Is it to support the parents’ lifestyle, or is it being put in a trust for the kids later on in life?”
Parents of Instafamous Queensland-based kids, Barty Middelbosch, 8, and Katya Perova, 13,
are adamant they are not profiting from their children.
“It’s definitely not something we’ve put upon him,” says Barty’s mum, Shelly Middelbosch, who started her son’s account last year. The blond star now has 28,000 followers, with offers to collaborate with brands in America.
“It evolved naturally … the end dream is wherever he decides to take it, 100 per cent,” she says. “This might be something that fizzles out; we have no expectations and not on him either.”
Russian-born mum Iuliia Perova, an accountant, says Katya is old enough to make her own decisions, after the pair set up the Instagram account together two years ago.
“No one is forcing her, even when she was younger, nothing was from me, it was from her,” says Perova, who moved the family to the Gold Coast from Moscow four years ago. The pair started posting pictures of Katya in dresses made out of popcorn or crayons for fun. Now the teen has 100,000 followers, and is using the platform as a launch pad for her modelling career.
“We don’t take any profit from Instagram yet,” Perova says. “It’s about developing Katya’s career as a model, not a business.”
Any money her daughter makes goes straight into her own bank account.
“She is quite generous and she wants to share, but it’s not a lot, so she keeps her own money,” Perova says. “She is saving for her braces … all of the paid jobs she’s done, she puts that money towards that. I’m happy that my daughter is clever with her money.”
Seymour, whose family runs an audio visual company, is open about the fact Piper’s account became a business two years ago.
“If Piper is booked for a photoshoot, that’s all Piper and that’s her money, because she’s done the hard work,” she says. “But if it’s a client that I have to write blog posts for, or do other things for, and Piper happens to be the person in the photo, then that’s the money that pays for us to live, that’s our life … it goes two ways.”
She is comfortable knowing her and her daughter are making a profit, and says she explains to Piper before a shoot that she has a job to do.
“There is a certain level of behaviour that I require of her at events … (and) at photoshoots. If she doesn’t do that, we won’t get invited back and we won’t get to do the nice things she gets to do. If she’s four or 24, the client expects something for their dollar … (and) she knows what’s expected of her.”
Celebrity endorsements are nothing new but the rise of the social media star is proving a powerful tool for to big brands. Influencers of all categories, from travel, fashion, beauty and health, can earn more than $100,000 a year.
Australian Influencer marketing company Tribe, founded by TV personality Jules Lund, has branches across Australia and the UK, and currently has 3000 clients on its books.
Tribe CEO Anthony Svirskis says their average influencer earns $800 a month.
“The average post cost roughly $200 for someone with 20,000 followers, so it’s lucrative for influencers, but also very affordable for brands,” he says. “Finding that sponsored content from the people you seek (on Instagram) is very,
very powerful.”
Concrete research on how well the industry is doing is hard to come by, but according to predictions by global influencer marketing company Mediakix, it will be a multimillion-dollar industry in five years’ time.
Globally the industry has grown 50 per cent each year, according to Svirskis, but he admits it’s an industry that’s hard to track.
“We clearly see it’s working (for brands) based on repeat usage, increasing budgets and high referral rates,” Svirskis says.
Big brands on the company’s books are forking out up to $100,000 on influencer campaigns, with clients including Topshop, Uber Eats, Swisse, Cadbury, Optus and Ikea.
“It’s started to become a pretty important part of marketers’ playbooks,” Svirskis says. “Even two to three years ago you had to educate someone on what influencer marketing was and convince them to get a budget, now those budgets are much more dedicated.”
Tribe admits it’s difficult to quantify and more companies are introducing ways to safeguard their clients from influencers with fake followers.
“We built a scanning system which scans every influencer who joins our network on entry and then four times a day,” Svirskis explains.
Since the industry boom, Australian child model agency Bettina Management has seen a huge rise in child models being used for social media campaigns.
“Now we’re doing about 50 per cent jobs for Instagram and 50 per cent TV commercials,” says communications manager Selby Holland.
“Over the last five years we’ve seen more and more jobs for social media coming through, especially in the last two years, it’s become particularly big.”
Barty, or Barty Bosch as he’s known on Instagram, signed with an agent at five, but through Instagram his popularity skyrocketed and his blonde hair and blue eyes have attracted a huge overseas following.
“He gets a lot of things sent to him and a lot of requests to collaborate,” his mum Middelbosch says. “Everything is going for more of a social media platform … it opens up more opportunities,” says Middelbosch, whose son starred in a Pine O Cleen commercial at five.
He’s since appeared in commercials for Stockland, Movie World and acted as an extra in the Gold Coast-filmed blockbuster
Thor: Ragnarok.
For Katya, social media has led to her gaining work as a model for Cotton On, Decjuba, Pavement, child clothing brand Tutu Du Monde, and appear in an Optus TV commercial. She’s also being watched by an international model agency that Perova says is interested in signing her when she turns 16.
This new platform offers kids enormous exposure and opportunities, but providing the public unfettered access into the lives of young children, is not without security risks.
“There’s definitely some real concerns to make sure you keep the children safe,” says Middelbosch, who blocks a couple of users a week due to inappropriate comments towards her son. “As a parent there’s a huge responsibility for cyber safety … we have had some concerns around that.”
Perova says if her daughter’s online profile rises, so will her concerns.
“My husband and I pick her up from school and we don’t allow her to be alone on the street by herself,” she explains. “If her Instagram grows bigger and she gets the fame of being a model, I definitely will be worried about the future.”
It’s enough of a concern for Seymour that she she never posts pictures of Piper in “in real time”.
These parents are confident they are raising happy, well-adjusted children in an age when social media is just part of life. The families are riding the wave for as long as it lasts, or until their child loses interest.
As the photoshoot with Piper wraps up, she diligently packs away her figurines. Her work day over, she says they are heading home where she plans to have a backyard lightsaber fight with her brother.
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